


All The Angels Love God

by maybemalapert (laconicisms)



Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: "Let's Wing It!" Fic Exchange, F/M, Introspection, Smoking, Song for Zula
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 19:19:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,176
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11812533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laconicisms/pseuds/maybemalapert
Summary: And Lucifer was an angel once. (Still is.)Written for the "Let's Wing It!" Fic Exchange.





	All The Angels Love God

**Author's Note:**

  * For [upquarkAO3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/upquarkAO3/gifts).



> I have to say I was blown away by the lyrics of the prompt ([Phosphorescent, _Song for Zula_](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPxQYhGpdvg)), not only the haunting beauty of them, but the allusions to (at least?) two other songs as well (Ring of Fire and The Rose). It was an awesome choice and I'm very grateful that I could work with this. I hope you'll enjoy it. <3  
>  All the ♥ to geckoholic for betaing.

The smoke from his cigarette is drifting away from the balcony and further inland, carried by a soft breeze that barely ruffles his hair. The tip glows brighter in the dark as he takes another drag, filling his lungs with the kind of air that saturates hell, full of tar with ash drifting past.

He stares at the butt for a while, wonders if it -- like his wings, like _so many_ things -- is just another hook pulling at his flesh, keeping him pinned. Annoyed, he stubs it out and flicks it over the railing. 

Some days -- most days -- it seems like nothing in his life is ever truly his.

A low sound breaks the silence and he looks over to where the Detective has fallen into slumber, left hand still clutching one of the myriad of files she has brought with her. Normally, he avoids the more mundane -- and infinitely boring -- side of police work, but the rings under her eyes, dark and hollow, had him offering a second set, his own, before he could think better of it.

She cares so much, his Detective, giving herself completely to her work, to the souls of the dead who are not around any longer to appreciate her dedication. And to her offspring, who doesn't either.

He, too, has known this madness, that single focus on another outside himself, his will utterly subsumed, his devotion all-encompassing. The unbridled love of a child who cannot conceive of the pain it might face if it ever were to stop obeying.

The Fall had not hurt even a tenth as much as the realisation that the love he felt meant _nothing_.

(The love he feels, still, after all this time.)

Nor had the pain from his broken, bleeding, burning face hurt half as much as the twisting of his name into something monstrous. The very epitome of evil.

No, that kind of complete denial of one's self and identity and desires can only ever lead to ruin. She cares too much, his detective.

Cares too much about _him_ , too, and he wishes she were not tangled up in this, that she were not another shackle binding him to the chariot of divine providence behind which he must run like a dog leashed to the back of a horse cart.

Resist and be strangled and dragged behind. Follow meekly and suffer in a different way.

Can't win either way, eh, dad?

But at least this is true, he has never been meek. Mindlessly obedient, naive to the point of stupidity even, but not meek. Not ever that.

He pulls out another cigarette, flicks his lighter. The flame dances in front of him, beckoning him, mocking him, daring him. He touches a finger to it to prove to himself that he is not afraid.

Hasn't been for a long, long time.

That little thrill of terror in the restaurant when it looked like he and the Detective might die in the flames does not count.

(It does.)

The Morningstar has never minded heat. Would have been a poor purveyor of light if he were to fear its burning warmth, but the speed at which he was cast down scorched his skin, blackened it, and for the first time since his creation, made him flinch away in terror at everything that was bright.

Hell is dark and full of ashes, signs of a fire extinguished, its danger neutered. The charred remnants of his skin forever blowing past and reminding him of the endless fall where his skin burned and regenerated so often the burned flecks could fill the infinite expanse that is hell.

Regenerating until it couldn't any more, his formidable healing powers finally exhausted.

He lights the cigarette. Because he wants to.

(In defiance of the last residue of terror still lurking beneath his skin.)

Lights it for the same reason he does so many things. (Defiance.) Desire. 

And yet, he wants to do so many more things than just the paltry little pleasures he's been indulging in. He has a multitude of aching needs that, ultimately, boil down to just the one: for once in his life make a choice that is truly his, unfettered by the strings of the great puppeteer in the sky.

As if that could ever happen.

Lucifer takes a drag from the cigarette and watches the smoke curl upwards, away from earth, and doesn't wish he could follow. He doesn't wish to spread his -- non-existent, burned to cinders -- wings and defy the gravity pulling at his feet as if it were attempting to drag him all the way back down.

(He does.)

The chains of duty are heavy, and though those of earth are lighter, he returns to the table and the mound of papers. They aren't really his duty, but hers, a self-chosen one at that. Few would invest so much of their -- short, too short -- time. He isn't jealous of a mountain of cellulose, _he isn't_.

(Even he does not believe himself.)

Dawn is breaking when she stirs at last. The pile of files to his right, the read pile, has grown larger than the one to his left, and he thinks he may have found something in one of them. 

Her eyes open and she groans. "You shouldn't have let me sleep. There is too much to do," she admonishes, tongue still heavy, the words a little slurred. The file falls from her hand as she moves, sheets scattering. She swears, taking his father's name in vain, and scrambles after them.

She, the atheist, put in his path by the creator.

In the beginning -- no need for a Word spoken -- he would have obeyed unasked, with his head held high (for how can one not feel pride if so blessed by Him). And though the Fall has changed him, still the devil would not bow his head for anyone.

Would have attempted to disobey, however. Had attempted it, for two weeks in Vegas.

"I wonder how you slept at all," he says, a last, laughable attempt at driving her away by raising her anger. "The volume of your snoring should have woken you on its own."

But Lucifer Morningstar is still changing. He hardly recognises himself some days, and as the detective rises to her feet from where she knelt to pick up her precious papers, a spark of anger in her eyes that resonates with the endless pit of fury in his soul, a quickly hidden expression on her face that echoes the sea of pain, he admits -- if only to himself, if only for a moment, but long _enough_ \-- that this kind of pain and anger can only come from love felt infinitely deep.

What then is one more lost aspect of his self if it will spare her this depth of agony. If, indeed, it promises to give him something he craves to an extent which he as not felt for eons.

(Liar.)

Lucifer looks at Chloe Decker looking down at him, the file clutched to her chest, and considers meekness.

**Author's Note:**

> Phosphorescent, _Song for Zula_
> 
> Some say love is a burning thing  
> That it makes a fiery ring  
> Oh but I know love as a fading thing  
> Just as fickle as a feather in a stream  
> See, honey, I saw love. You see, it came to me  
> It put its face up to my face so I could see  
> Yeah then I saw love disfigure me  
> Into something I am not recognizing 
> 
> See, the cage, it called. I said, "Come on in"  
> I will not open myself up this way again  
> Nor lay my face to the soil, nor my teeth to the sand  
> I will not lay like this for days now upon end  
> You will not see me fall, nor see me struggle to stand  
> To be acknowledge by some touch from his gnarled hands  
> You see, the cage, it called. I said, "Come on in"  
> I will not open myself up this way again
> 
> You see, the moon is bright in that treetop night  
> I see the shadows that we cast in the cold, clean light  
> My feet are gold. My heart is white  
> And we race out on the desert plains all night  
> See, honey, I am not some broken thing  
> I do not lay here in the dark waiting for thee  
> No my heart is gold. My feet are light  
> And I am racing out on the desert plains all night
> 
> So some say love is a burning thing  
> That it makes a fiery ring  
> Oh but I know love as a caging thing  
> Just a killer come to call from some awful dream  
> O and all you folks, you come to see  
> You just stand there in the glass looking at me  
> But my heart is wild. And my bones are steam  
> And I could kill you with my bare hands if I was free


End file.
